American Repertory Honors Include Outstanding Company

Many of the key awards came in pairs when the eighth annual Lester Horton Dance Awards were announced during a ceremony on the plaza in front of the Japan America Theatre in Little Tokyo on Friday.

Named for the Los Angeles modern dance pioneer who died in 1953, the Hortons honor Southern California achievement during the past year and are voted by members of the Dance Resource Center, a local service organization.

Various forms of modern dance dominated the winners list, acing out nominees in ballet and a half-dozen world dance idioms.

The dancing historians of the American Repertory Dance Company won one of the most coveted Hortons, outstanding performance/company, plus another in the category of revival/restaging or reconstruction, for a program of vintage California modernism at UCLA. Coincidentally, that program is due to be restaged in a revised version on Thursday and Friday in the Watercourt at California Plaza downtown.

Another upcoming Watercourt attraction (set for Aug. 5), Rosanna Gamson’s L.A. cityscape “Grand Hope Flower” won Hortons for Gamson’s choreography and Shane Cadman’s music as originally presented at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica.

In the category of outstanding individual performance, Karen Goodman won for contemporary solos on the now-defunct Feet Speak series at Occidental College and also on the “5 Women Dancing” program at Cal State L.A.

Diavolo Dance Theatre’s experiment with a rocking and rolling dance floor, “Capture,” captured awards for Adam Davis’ sets and Laura Brody’s costumes, while lighting designer Eileen Cooley won a single Horton for multiple assignments: Feet Speak, Dance Kaleidoscope, “5 Women Dancing” and a program by the Keshet Chaim Dance Ensemble.

The award for staging traditional dance went to Avaz International Dance Theatre in a self-produced program at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre, and the award for teaching went to veteran champion of African-based dance idioms Elle Johnson.

Tie votes doubled the awards in two categories, with Don Hewitt (longtime producer of the annual Dance Kaleidoscope series) and Ellen Ketchum (impresario of the Feet Speak series) both given special awards for presenting local work, and Lynn Dally (director of the Jazz Tap Ensemble) and Lula Washington (director of the Lula Washington Dance Theatre) were both honored for sustained achievement.

Finally a Dance Resource Center board of directors award was voted to Laura Zucker of the Los Angeles County Arts Commission for her support of dance.